June 2014

06/30/2014

Most educators have probably found themselves wishing for a simpler solution to the hardships and inequities of the U.S. education system. I recently got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend the Oppi Festival in Helsinki, Finland, with a group of seven U.S. educators to learn more about the Finnish school system and the lessons it might offer.

During the trip, our group had the chance to visit several innovative schools. While I can’t say that I uncovered some mysterious holy grail of education, I did discover something that I had never considered before: the importance of happy teaching and happy learning.

The teachers and students that I observed were happy. Students seemed to actually be enjoying their learning experiences, and teachers appeared satisfied and valued.

It made me wonder: “What makes school in Finland such an enjoyable experience for students and teachers?”

Here are 13 factors that I identified.

1. A heavy emphasis on play. In Finland, people believe that children learn through play, imagination, and self-discovery, so teachers not only allow but encourage play. Development of the whole person is highly valued, especially in the early years. Even at the high school level, you can see students playing foosball or videogames in the student center.

2. No high-stakes standardized testing. Finnish schools believe more test preparation means less time for free thinking and inquiry. Accountability is measured at the classroom level by the experts—teachers.

3. Trust. This was perhaps the greatest difference I observed. The Finnish government trusts their municipalities, the municipalities trust school administrators, administrators trust teachers, teachers trust students, and in return, parents and families trust teachers. There is no formal teacher-evaluation system. Teachers, similar to doctors in the U.S., are trusted professionals.

4. Schools don’t compete with one another. There are no school evaluations since it is believed that all schools should be good. Non-competitive school structures result in no need for school-choice programs.

5. Out-of-this-world teacher prep programs. Part of the reason why teachers are so trusted in Finland is that becoming a teacher is an extremely rigorous and prestigious process. Only the best of the best are accepted into education school. In addition to having high test scores, candidates must pass an interview investigating their integrity, passion, and pedagogy. Universities are committed to finding candidates that are the right fit for the teaching profession. Their programs are research-based, and teachers finish with master’s degrees, including a published thesis.

06/14/2014

The pilot project in which nine Finnish universities and 10 polytechnics charged tuition fees for some non-European masters students closes at the end of this year. But already most of the institutions have announced that they will not claim fees from students admitted this coming autumn.

During the pilot, higher education institutions could charge fees to students from outside the European Union and European Economic Area who were admitted to a university or polytechnic masters programme delivered in a foreign language. Institutions could independently determine the amount they would charge.

In 2011, 24 courses were approved for the pilot project. Fees were charged to 110 students, more than 80% of them studying at Aalto University or Lappeenranta University of Technology.

The tuition fees charged ranged between €3,500 (US$4,700) to €11,750 (US$15,900) per academic year. The most commonly charged tuition fee was €8,000 (US$1,100) per year.

The Ministry of Education and Culture working group on the pilot project delivered its report in April. The report, only available in Finnish, characterised the trial period as not having “fulfilled all the initial expectations but still having contributed positively to the development of the internationalisation of Finnish higher education in general”.

The report was not mandated to take a stand on the introduction of tuition fees on a permanent basis.

Any decisions on the matter remain to be seen, wrote Studyinfinland on its webpage. “A governmental decision and a change in legislation will be required; and no such decision or changes have yet been made.”

The fees system

Of the students charged tuition fees, almost all received grants of different sizes from higher education institutions or the Erasmus Mundus programme. The grants covered the tuition fee either in full or partially, and some also included funds to cover some living costs. Institutions awarded the grants primarily based on academic achievement. Students paying tuition fees most commonly came from China, Pakistan, Russia and Iran.

Institutions participating in the pilot are eligible to claim tuition fees for 2014-15 should they want to do so.

As reported by University World News, a motion to introduce tuition fees in Finland was presented to parliament in December 2012 led by MP Arto Satonen of the National Coalition Party, but a final decision on the motion was not reached then.

In December 2013 Satonen said: “At the moment it seems that it is not going to be any progress in the tuition-fee bill in 2011-15,” referring to the parliamentary session.

Lack of enthusiasm

University World News approached Satonen and other Finnish higher education representatives, and it looks like the whole tuition fee issue is not regarded with much enthusiasm.

Nine student organisations in Finland issued a statement saying that introducing tuition fees would not help institutions attract students or improve their finances.

“This is shown by both other Nordic countries as well as the trial period in Finland. In Sweden, the number of applicants dropped by more than 90% during the first year after fees were introduced.

“Seven years after the introduction of tuition fees in Denmark, the number of students from outside the European Union and European Economic Area has still not recovered.

“This despite both Sweden and Denmark continuously pumping money into scholarship funds. Sweden has also been forced to shut down international programmes, especially in technology,” the students said.

“It is nonetheless a necessity for Finland to attract international students in order to promote internationalisation of Finnish education and society, for labour as well as a solution for lack of labour and in order to create new job opportunities.”

06/12/2014

The corridors of Joutsa High School currently stand empty because of the summer holidays, but in a couple of years’ time things could be this quiet all year round, if the school’s mooted closure goes ahead.

The government has outlined plans to only provide high-school teaching in schools with over 500 students, from 2017 onwards. A working group at the Ministry of Education will on Friday try to reach a decision about the reform of the further education system.

If the 500-students limit comes into force, the closest high school to Joutsa will be 70 kilometres away in Jyväskylä. Residents of Joutsa say they are concerned that the school closure would cause families or students to move away from the town, which is known for its jewellery manufacturing.

Researchers are claiming that reforms to the further education network could have a significant impact on population drain from rural communities, speeding up the rate at which young people move away.

Studies have shown that households in rural areas would like high schools to be available within a five to ten kilometre radius.

”If the aim is to have around 500 students per high school, the municipality’s population base will have to be between 10,000 and 15,000 inhabitants. Even then students would be required from neighbouring municipalities to keep the numbers sufficiently high,” National Consumer Research Centre senior researcher Hannu Kytö said.

Kytö predicts that the school reforms could in future have as much impact on where people relocate to as the proposed reforms to the health and social care system, which will involve redrawing the boundaries of regional health authorities.

Current migration statistics show that 15-19 year olds are focused on large or medium-sized towns. Only 30 municipalities have seen a net increase in residents in this age group between 2009 and 2013.

06/11/2014

Australia should place less emphasis on testing children and more on wiping out disadvantage, an international education expert told WA principals yesterday.

Pasi Sahlberg, from Finland, and Pak Tee Ng, from Singapore - two of the world's highest- performing countries based on international tests of 15-year-olds in maths, reading and science - spoke at the WA Primary Principals Association State conference in Perth.

Dr Sahlberg, a former Finnish education official now based at Harvard University's graduate school of education, told principals they needed to respect the right of children to have time to play.

Finnish schools devote more time than Australian schools to play and teachers spend fewer hours fronting classrooms.

He said Australia should rethink its approach to national numeracy and literacy testing, instead of allowing accountability to drive its education system.

"I'm not anti-testing, I think we need to have data and information about how students are learning and how the system is doing," he said. "But I think Australia is probably overdoing that, in other words, giving too central a role to assessments."

Dr Sahlberg said the evidence was clear that improving equity as well as quality was the key to boosting student achievement.

"Equity of outcomes in this country is probably the best thing that you can invest in," Dr Sahlberg said. "In other words, making the schools serve all types of children, including the Aboriginal population, is better."

He said WA had been more successful at achieving equity than Australia overall. The Gonski review was the best system-wide analysis he had read.

Dr Ng, head of policy and leadership studies at Nanyang Technological University, said Australia should not try to import other countries' education practices.

He said while other countries were copying Singapore, it was trying to move away from standardised testing.

The proposal to raise the school leaving age in Finland to 17 has come under criticism from judicial experts, who have questioned the lawfulness and effectiveness of the compulsory nature of the proposal.

After Krista Kiuru (SDP), the Minister of Education, unveiled the proposal last month, it has also come under criticism from teachers' unions and members of the National Coalition.

The proposal was circulated for comments until last Friday. In most of the solicited comments, the proposed one-year raise in school leaving age is rejected in favour of more focused measures, such as additional counselling services. Although the objective of ensuring everyone obtains upper secondary qualifications is generally considered appropriate, the measures proposed to achieve that are not.

“Are compulsion and obligation really the means to get young people who are unable and unwilling to attend school due to psychological or other personal reasons to continue studying?” asks Deputy Parliamentary Ombudsman Jussi Pajuoja.

Pajuoja also regards the proposal to grant Regional State Administrative Agencies the right to impose a penalty payment on young people who abdicate their obligation as problematic. The coercive measure in question, he points out, would be administrative and its target a private citizen.

From the viewpoint of the constitution and legal protection of pupils, the power to order young people to accept a study place is similarly problematic, Pajuoja adds.

06/10/2014

The agreement was signed on Monday by HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education and Secretary General of Supreme Education Council Dr Mohamed Abdul Wahed Ali al-Hammadi and Jan-Markus Holm, CEO of the school’s operator EduCluster Finland.

The agreement is part of an initiative that brings leading international schools to open branches in Qatar.

As per the agreement, the Finnish school will start operating from the 2014-15 academic year in the kindergarten and the first and second years of primary stage. The school will follow the Finnish curriculum. It will also teach Qatar’s history, Islamic studies and the Arabic language. The school will be open for boys and girls alike.

The agreement signing ceremony was attended by Finland’s Ambassador to Qatar Semela Alcabeca Antiro, SEC Education Institute Director Fawzia al-Khater and a group of experts and officials from Qatar and Finland.

Speaking after the event, al-Khater said bringing international schools to Qatar is an innovative initiative designed to provide diverse and high-level academic options and alternatives to Qatari families and residents alike, so that the growing demand for high-quality private education is met.

On the criteria for selection of international schools, al-Khater said the school must have an outstanding record of proven success besides having an international or national academic accreditation. The school also must teach the same curriculum and educational tools offered in the parent country.

International rankings and some studies have recognised the Finnish education system as one of the best in the world and several countries have adopted the system in their own schools.

06/09/2014

According to study published by the Ministry of Education and Culture on Monday, highly educated people make a declining share of the Finnish population under the age of 39. Among those aged 35 to 39, the highly-educated proportion peaked last year.

In 2012, just over a million people in Finland were categorised as highly educated, or about one fifth of the population.

The year before last, some 1,093,000 people in Finland were classed as highly educated, making up about 20 percent of the population of 5.4 million.

About 30 percent of highly-educated people hold advanced university degrees, while most of the others hold bachelor’s or other lower-level degrees.

The rise in the share of the under-45 population made up of highly-educated individuals slowed in the late 1990s, and began to drop in 2000.

06/08/2014

AFTER the report cards have been handed out and school-end celebrations are over, construction workers will take over schools to address their moisture and indoor air quality problems. The major renovations will cost anything between 20 and 50 million euros, depending on the size and architecture of the school.

Dozens of major renovations and even more minor ones are already underway in the Helsinki region, with poor indoor air quality the problem at most of the schools.

At Aurora primary school in Espoo, the last week of the school year was spent packing up. There are moving boxes and refuse sacks everywhere, with stickers indicating whether the contents should be thrown out, stored, transferred to the temporary school building or sent to other schools.

Uma Jutila, the deputy principal at Aurora, first noticed an odd smell in the school a few decades ago. At first, however, the concerns of the school staff were not taken seriously. "People have experienced skin, respiratory and eye problems, as well as itching," she describes.

In certain classrooms, she adds, sick leaves were up to ten times as common as in others, prompting some employees to change jobs. "I wore a respirator when I was packing up the instruments," Jutila says.

Overall, as many as one in five schools in Espoo will be affected, directly or indirectly, by the renovations, with as many as 3,100 children set to study in temporary facilities next autumn.

In Helsinki, the renovations of Meilahti and Vuosaari comprehensive schools are nearing completion, costing the city 10 and 11 million euros respectively. Pupils of the upper stage of Vesala comprehensive school, in turn, will move to prefab facilities until the scheduled completion of an 11 million euro facelift in 2016.

Elsewhere, the roughly 900 students of Brändö gymnasium and Svenska Normalyceum will take over the vacant premises of Länsi-Helsinki upper secondary school.

"The upper secondary school was shut down in 2010, and it was decided that it would be reserved for temporary use for ten years," says Mauno Kemppi, the head architect at the Education Department of Helsinki.

06/04/2014

The fact that Sweden dropped in December's Pisa rankings is not an accurate reflection of school life, the Dagens Nyheter newspaper reported on Wednesday. The results saw the country's 15-year-olds drop below the OECD average in maths, reading comprehension, and natural sciences.

But students were too worn out to care about the Pisa tests, choosing instead to focus their attention on the other 12 national tests they were sitting at the time, all of which contributed to their final end-of-year grade.

"The national tests are insane. They drain so much of our energy," Jesper Palmqvist, a top Bjursås student, told the paper.

"When another test came along - above all one that didn't contribute to our final grades, we got the feeling that it wasn't so important. Many of us didn't take it seriously and that kind of attitude is contagious."

Palmqvist, who was just one of over 100 interviewed by DN, scored the highest possible grades in maths in year nine, but only answered one in three Pisa questions correctly in the same subject.

Many of the students admitted that they just answered the multiple-choice questions at random, while others explained that their teachers had said the tests weren't important.

The Pisa rankings revealed that no other country had fallen so abruptly as Sweden in maths over a ten-year span. Overall, not one of the other 32 countries included in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) survey saw its students take such a beating in their studies.

Sweden's schools now rank below both the United States and the UK according to the Pisa rankings.

06/02/2014

The Swedish lesson for second-year business information technology students commences with telephone phrases.

"Ta fram sidan 51," instructs Swedish teacher Anu Piispala. While students open their books to page 51, a special needs teacher Satu Huuh-tanen gives out books to those who have left theirs at home. This course has an extra teacher helping out at during lessons.

Lessons with two teachers are one means of reducing dropout rates at the Hyria vocational college in Hyvinkää and Riihimäki. In some courses, students' skill levels can be worlds apart, which is frustrating for everyone and can lead to students giving up on their studies.

Vocational education institutions are looking for ways of curbing the number of students dropping out. According to the youth guarantee implemented by the government, 90 per cent of 20-to-24-year olds should have a secondary education qualification or training by the end of the decade.

For some time now, out of the young people entering vocational training straight from comprehensive school, around ten percent have quit their studies without a qualification every year. The Ministry of Education and Culture wants to cut this figure down to seven per cent this year, meaning that altogether 80 per cent of students starting a course would gain a qualification.

Downward trend

According to statistics compiled by the ministry, the number of students dropping out is showing a downward trend.

In Hyria, 8.5 per cent of students quit their studies last year, compared with 11.4 per cent the year before.

The Ministry is concerned over the social impact of dropping out, as for underage students quitting studies can be the start of a slippery slope to social exclusion, says director Pasi Kankare from the Ministry of Education.

"But there are also short-term costs," adds Kankare.

A year in vocational training costs society 11,000 euros on average and this investment is wasted if the student drops out without a qualification.

"There are some 130,000 studying in vocational colleges every year. If ten per cent drop out, this translates into 143 million euros of wasted funding."

A zero dropout rate is an unrealistic goal, as Hyria accepts almost all applicants whose school report grades can range from 5 to 9. Most applicants know what to expect from the studies, but not all.

Hyria has made it easier to swap courses within the college to prevent students from quitting their studies.

But this and the two-teacher model are not a miracle cure. The college has also made the tuition more hands on and given teachers more responsibility and better pay. Teachers also get in touch with students who are absent from lessons.